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FRIDAY, AUGUST 6, 1920.
THE TOILER
PAGE 9.
can not make as big profits as they greedily desire.
But you can act now to organize the power of the
workers to meet the situation. If the working masses are
united and can express their power through one organized
body, the capitalists will listen when they demand the
opportunity to earn a living.
Now is the time to organize to meet the crisis. Organ
ize in your shop if you are still at work. Elect a committee
to represent your shop. Send delegates to meet the workers
from other shops.
The unemployed must be organized in the same way.
Let each group of workers as they arc discharged, organ
ize a committee and elects delegates. Unite the shop com
mittees and the unemployed committees in a Workers
Council for your industrial centre.
With such an organization the workers will be pro
pared to meet the threat of hard times. They will be
able to dictate their own terms to the masters of society
who arc now shouting gleefully because of the prospect
of their suffering.
Organize the Workers Councils and their will be no
starvation for the workers while the capitalists wallow
in wealth and luxury.
Lying on a bod at the county hospital,
penniless, friendless and 81 years old, Carl
Raymond, song writer, repeated the words of
one of his songs written years ago. Here is
the verse he applied to himself.
As we walk clown the street.
0, how often do we meet
Some poor old man whose life is
naught hut woe;
And with age his form is bent.
In his pockets not a cent.
And for shelter he knows not
where to go. ,
With relations by the score
Who turn him from their door
And sneering, in the street just
pass him by;
If you ask him why 'tis done.
He'll answer you and say:
"I'm poor and old and only in
the way."
"That's my life in a nutshell," he said.
Raymond was born 81 years ago in the
shadow of Bunker Hill Monument. He fought
in the Mexican and Civil wars. As a reward for
a usefully spent life capitalism gives him a
pauper's bed in a Chicago hospital and after
that a pauper's grave.
Miranda Steele, age 84, has held down the
same job in a mill at Clarepoint, N. H., for 67
years. The report fails to record the number
of millions Miranda accumulated in this 67
years of honest toil.
When Miranda was a little school girl,
capitalism deprived her of the right to an edu
cation, it also robbed her of her childhood
and turned her into a machine for making pro
fits. She has been working at it ever since.
67 years of toil in the same mill.
67 years of unremitting monotony.
67 years of wasted life.
No wifehood, no motherhood. No sons to be
proud of, no daughters to love. No grand
children to fondle. Just work, 67 years of it at
one stretch. Same surroundings, same job over
and over. Same jog to and from the mill day
after day and year after year.
At last old age has overtaken Miranda, but
still it is the same. No change, no cozy corner,
no security, no quiet days in which to reverie
over the events of those 84 years of life for
Miranda. Perhaps she wouldn't want to recall
them anyway, those 67 years of ceaseless toil.
With the end in sight, Miranda is still fol
lowing the thorn strewn path of the mill slave,
but how many beds of roses has her labor pro
vided for her masters in 67 vears?
Uncle Sam prepared to distribute 35,000
"Voctory Medals" a day to his World War
veterans. The distribution started June 21, so
far 50,9.16 medals have been applied for. Now,
Uncle is wondering why the light demand.
Maybe it is because the boys havn't been abb
to figure out wherein their victory lay.
House rents of Altoona railway workers
have raised $10.00 per month since the famous
award. Now they are wondering how much
they would have been raised had they re
ceived all they asked. The rent hogs are ap
parently striving to lay the foundation for
another R. R. strike. Let us hope.
COMMUNISM AND FAMILY.
(Continued from page 7.)
will pass the greater part of the day and where
intelligent education will make of him a Com
munist who is conscious of the greatness of this
sacred motto; solidarity, comradeship, mutual
aid, devotion to the collective life.
(Continued next week.)